March 2017

As leaders in the campaign to end violence against women and children, Interval House is always looking for the best ways to address the diverse needs of the women and children we serve. We continue to provide innovative services to empower survivors of family violence to transform their lives and break the cycle of abuse.

Every year on March 8, we pause to celebrate International Women’s Day. We celebrate women’s achievements, their contributions to the world we live in, and we celebrate women’s strength and determination to continue raising the bar towards the goal of gender equity and equal human rights for all.

The Building Economic Self-Sufficiency program (BESS) is designed to help women acquire the skills they need to live and thrive independently. It's also designed to build a sense of community. Over the 2016 holiday season, we hosted a number of events for our BESS clients to enjoy the spirit of the season.

We recently carried out an assessment of our Building Economic Self-Sufficiency program (BESS), to find ways in which we could improve our clients' success in the program. Following the BESS assessment, we will be making the following improvements to our program:

Leaving an abusive relationship can be a complicated process. It has additional layers to it when there are children involved. When a woman flees her home for safety in a shelter or to stay with loved ones, it’s imperative that she files for custody immediately to ensure her abuser does not attempt to report her as a missing person or the child as abducted. When she arrives at a shelter or other new place of residence, she can call the police to let them know her location and that she has left an abusive relationship. Police will verify this information and the abuser will only be told she and any children are safe.